God Of Gaming wrote:

No HDMI is non issue, win98 gaming is CRT gaming

CRT on 98 isn't overkill at all, I would call it period correct. Since we are talking about HW overkill, I think that HDMI note it's a valid point in this discussion 😉

Srandista wrote:

CRT on 98 isn't overkill at all, I would call it period correct. Since we are talking about HW overkill, I think that HDMI note it's a valid point in this discussion 😉

CRT is best for 98 imo, most if not all pre-2006 games don't support widescreen properly even with patches and fixes and stuff, they would still have some remaining issues, usualy stretched menus at the very least. 4:3 is best for old games. And 4:3 wise, a good CRT will beat every LCD, a 21" Trinitron will usually let you run games at 1600x1200 at 100Hz, with zero input lag, and the games that dont support that rez and need to run at a lower rez, no problem, no scaling to worry about, and you get even higher refresh at lower resolutions.

God Of Gaming wrote:

CRT is best for 98 imo, most if not all pre-2006 games don't support widescreen properly even with patches and fixes and stuff, they would still have some remaining issues, usualy stretched menus at the very least. 4:3 is best for old games. And 4:3 wise, a good CRT will beat every LCD, a 21" Trinitron will usually let you run games at 1600x1200 at 100Hz, with zero input lag, and the games that dont support that rez and need to run at a lower rez, no problem, no scaling to worry about, and you get even higher refresh at lower resolutions.

I'm not sure what you mean that 'a good CRT will beat every LCD' - as long as you don't mind possibly needing to have some black bars, modern 1ms response time high refresh rate monitors are great for enjoying retro PC games on. For my main retro setup I couldn't find my desired Samsung 214T 1600x1200 LCD screen used anywhere and ended up picking up a new Acer 1900x1200 4ms 75Hz screen that looks amazing - games or otherwise (post-color calibration of course).

IMO the only time where you really need a CRT is for old light gun console games since the way they detect the white spot frames doesn't jive with the way LCD screens render frames but for PC gaming there is definitely no need to hunt down a 75lb 20 year old Sony Trinitron.

4:3 is best for old games

Actually some older games, like practically all Unreal Engine 1.0 games for example, had nearly infinite vertical scaling. So 5:4 monitors are better in some cases.

Let's be honest though, that's definitely not the case for majority games from that ere. 4:3 for those is the king (in LCD format for me).

kalm_traveler wrote:

I'm not sure what you mean that 'a good CRT will beat every LCD' - as long as you don't mind possibly needing to have some black bars, modern 1ms response time high refresh rate monitors are great for enjoying retro PC games on.

They do the job but they are not as ideal. To begin with, no 1200p LCD exists with panel refresh above 60Hz, that 75Hz thing is only that it is able to take 75Hz signal on VGA at lower resolutions, for compatibility reasons, but is not actually displaying it on the screen at 75, as the panel itself is a 60hz panel. Then the 1ms thingy, its a marketing lie, no LCD has 1ms response when you actually measure them, not even close. And then theres the scaling issues for games that dont support 1200p and need to run at lower resolution... And then theres also the part where LCD panels all have various inherent issues, like IPS having IPS glow (unless it has A-TW polarazer but those are really rare) and not very deep blacks, VA faring better in those regards but usually having some really slow color transitions, and TN is just sad. OLED decent on paper but in reality it degrades too fast to be worth it. CRT's issues are that they are big and heavy, consume lots of power, and are unpleasant to the eye at low refresh rates, but the benefits of having true zero input lag, no scaling issues with different resolutions, capability of running at very high refresh rates, and having really good contrast with very deep blacks, are worth dealing with some weight and power draw for. I would probably be using a CRT for my main PC, if any 32" 1440p 100hz+ freesync CRTs with displayport input existed, sadly the closest thing to that is the FW900 which is not quite cutting it

and having really good contrast with very deep blacks

They don't, that's common misunderstanding.

God Of Gaming wrote:

kalm_traveler wrote:

I'm not sure what you mean that 'a good CRT will beat every LCD' - as long as you don't mind possibly needing to have some black bars, modern 1ms response time high refresh rate monitors are great for enjoying retro PC games on.

They do the job but they are not as ideal. To begin with, no 1200p LCD exists with panel refresh above 60Hz, that 75Hz thing is only that it is able to take 75Hz signal on VGA at lower resolutions, for compatibility reasons, but is not actually displaying it on the screen at 75, as the panel itself is a 60hz panel. Then the 1ms thingy, its a marketing lie, no LCD has 1ms response when you actually measure them, not even close. And then theres the scaling issues for games that dont support 1200p and need to run at lower resolution... And then theres also the part where LCD panels all have various inherent issues, like IPS having IPS glow (unless it has A-TW polarazer but those are really rare) and not very deep blacks, VA faring better in those regards but usually having some really slow color transitions, and TN is just sad. OLED decent on paper but in reality it degrades too fast to be worth it. CRT's issues are that they are big and heavy, consume lots of power, and are unpleasant to the eye at low refresh rates, but the benefits of having true zero input lag, no scaling issues with different resolutions, capability of running at very high refresh rates, and having really good contrast with very deep blacks, are worth dealing with some weight and power draw for. I would probably be using a CRT for my main PC, if any 32" 1440p 100hz+ freesync CRTs with displayport input existed, sadly the closest thing to that is the FW900 which is not quite cutting it

Curious if you have any sources for those ideas? This Acer I just picked up has an OSD refresh rate and it shows 75Hz over DisplayPort. I actually couldn't set the Windows 98SE Dell I have set up to 75Hz on VGA, but that may be either a limitation of the OS, driver, or that the TNT2 doesn't have enough grunt to handle 1920x1200 @ 75Hz.
I tested the DisplayPort with my modern laptop which has a Thunderbolt 3 port directly connected to its GPU, and a USB-C to full size DisplayPort adapter. Moreover, those of us sensitive to refresh rates can very easily see a difference between 60Hz motion and 75Hz motion. I can see stark changes until about 120Hz, after that I can't reliably tell the jumps to 144Hz or 165Hz though they both are clearly higher than 100Hz to my eyes.

Also curious why you think that no LCD panels have a 1ms GTG response time as everything I've read supports that indeed they do. 5-15 years ago that was not the case, but I'm not sure if you've been keeping up with the technology progression... my most recent 'gaming' display touted at 165Hz refresh rate and 1ms response time. There was absolutely zero perceptible input lag or ghosting at all, though if I'm honest the color accuracy could be improved.

The benefits of 1920x1200 as far as scaling were IMO that many of the more common lower resolutions are either even divisors of it, or have close enough multiples to take up the majority of the screen when correct aspect ratio scaling is applied - and I've found this to be the case so far. Example being that this Acer I have is a 24" screen, but when aspect ratio'd into a 4:3 resolution game most of them are taking up the entire vertical space.

I'm aware of IPS 'glow' but again that has really been toned down on modern panels - you might be surprised if you check some out post-calibration (I have an i1 Display Pro calibration tool so all my screens get a basic calibration before use - out of the box settings mean nothing to me).

Don't get me wrong, I understand the nostalgia of a high-quality large CRT (before I switched to LCD panels I had a 22" Sony Trinitron with DVI input that at the time blew my mind), but I have yet to see any actual evidence that in the higher-end panels in mid 2019 are as poor by comparison as the (AFAIK many years outdated) reasons you've listed.

If I am mistaken I would appreciate links to modern sources supporting your statements, again simply because as far as I've been reading and experiencing with my own screens LCDs seem to have improved tremendously over the last 15+ years, and when I've poked around the research as far as I understood, research sites like rtings seemed to be supporting that.

kalm_traveler wrote:

Curious if you have any sources for those ideas? ...

Actually you picked my curiocity, an Acer 1920x1200 monitor that has 75hz over display port? What model is that, might really be 75hz, to begin with, it having display port means its probably newer than any 1200p monitor I've seen, they tend to only have VGA and DVI. The ones Ive seen, allow 75hz only on the VGA port and only on lower resolutions and do so for hardware compatibility, and dont actually display it at 75hz on the panel because its a 60hz panel. Since yours takes 75hz on the display port as well and even at the native resolution I assume, its probably a 75hz panel, didnt know any of these exist. It's not a shitty TN I hope?

As for the 1ms thing, Ive checked lots of in depth monitor reviews on sites like tftcental, and in their pixel response and input lag testing, I havent seen any of the advertised 1ms displays actually turning out to be 1ms in testing. A few rare examples that do exceptionally well like the Acer XB270HU / XB271HU turned out to have about 3ms of input lag and about 6ms of pixel response, which is good enough really, its about 1 frame's worth of delay at 144hz which is nothing. But monitors like this are the exception rather than the norm, most of the tested displays end up being much slower, many of them even go as high as 30ms of total display lag, many of those being advertised as 1ms in official specs. So no, I don't trust official specs anymore, gotta see someone independent test it out and then I'd believe it.

p.s. I have no nostalgia for CRT because my first monitor was a 1280x1024 LCD

p.s.2 you said yourself, you can feel a difference up to 120hz, guess you're more sensitive than me, I can only feel a difference up to about 90hz, but either way, Im sure 1600x1200 at 100hz on a trinitron will feel better for you as well than 1600x1200 at 75hz on that acer. And again, no resolution scaling issues. True that 800x600 and 320x200/320x240 display as integer scaling on 1600x1200, but 640x480 and 1024x768 games are pretty common in the win9x era, what about those 😀

The Serpent Rider wrote:

and having really good contrast with very deep blacks

They don't, that's common misunderstanding.

Let me expand on that with some personal experience.

To achieve best blacks on CRT you need to lower the contrast to the point where black signal produces 0 cd/m2.

After that, you need to use a calibration tool (DTP94 etc) to "fix" the "black crush" which resulted from the above. This will give you a profile which you can force into games/windows. This profile will overwrite any profile a game uses by default so sometimes you will lose that artistic vision of the developer who instead of painstakingly repainting textures, adjusting shaders, etc decided to simply throw a color profile over everything.

Another downsides of the above:
- the colors do not "pop" as much as before (because the contrast had to be lowered) so for example a full red color is visually only about 80% nice red as it was before.
- full white signal will produce about 20% less cd/m2 (unless you hex edit some ABL values which is a questionable thing to do).

So now, If you have done all of the above, then the blacks are pretty good. But the only situation where black pixel is truly black is when the whole picture is made out of black pixels. The moment you display for example a small white circle on a black background, the black background will be slightly illuminated from the rest of the tube (how much depends on the size of the circle) and the circle will have a slight white shadow around it. If you game in a dark room, the blacks are definitely better than LCD but they are obviously not perfect. If you have ever seen a calibrated high-end LED TV with at least 30 "dimming zones", in a dark room, then that is roughly what it looks like in the end, but the dimming zone light bleed is more around white objects on the screen themselves (as describe on the white circle example above). Too bad slow LED TVs with dimming zones are shit for faster paced gaming.

Another common misconceptions, or rather important-yet-not-discussed aspects about CRT vs LCD:

#1: CRTs are not very bright. You get around 100 cd/m2 on full white signal which is "okay" for a dark room but anywhere else it will be annoying for most, especially if you are used to LCDs which are around 200-400 cd/m2 if I remember correctly. Some people refer to this as "the tube is dead, its getting old, has too many hours, needs calibration, etc" - that is not true, thats just how it is on CRTs, they are indeed pretty dim.

#2: LCDs blur the picture in motion. The way the pixels change color is just too slow. Open this on LCD and let me know if you can read the street names (at 60Hz-75Hz). On CRT you can clearly read them (at the same 60Hz-75Hz to keep it fair).

https://www.testufo.com/photo#photo=toronto-m … suit=0&height=0

(Toronto street map panorama slider, speed 1920 pixels/s)

God Of Gaming wrote:

...I would probably be using a CRT for my main PC, if any 32" 1440p 100hz+ freesync CRTs with displayport input existed...

Just a personal preference but if I would benefit from free/gsync (variable FPS) then I would know that my computer is simply too slow for the given game/settings. But I get that sometimes even the latest hardware is too slow for some (even old) games/settings. If you are concerned about screen tearing, I recommend framerate limit or scanline sync via RTSS app which helps great a deal and is good enough for me - but its not perfect, especially if your GPU load is above 50% or you want to use DSR where you will always get one visible tearline (which you can position near the top or bottom though).

Also, you can plug the latest DisplayPort graphics cards into CRT using a DP>VGA adapter (they have their own DAC) by the way.

Regarding the original topic (lol), I plan to attempt installing Win98 on i7 875k machine soon. I have no idea if its compatible or not so I will probably fail miserably, but want to try it just for fun. If I get it to work somehow, I will make sure to mention it back here.

God Of Gaming wrote:

Actually you picked my curiocity, an Acer 1920x1200 monitor that has 75hz over display port? What model is that, might really be […]
Show full quote

kalm_traveler wrote:

Curious if you have any sources for those ideas? ...

Actually you picked my curiocity, an Acer 1920x1200 monitor that has 75hz over display port? What model is that, might really be 75hz, to begin with, it having display port means its probably newer than any 1200p monitor I've seen, they tend to only have VGA and DVI. The ones Ive seen, allow 75hz only on the VGA port and only on lower resolutions and do so for hardware compatibility, and dont actually display it at 75hz on the panel because its a 60hz panel. Since yours takes 75hz on the display port as well and even at the native resolution I assume, its probably a 75hz panel, didnt know any of these exist. It's not a shitty TN I hope?

As for the 1ms thing, Ive checked lots of in depth monitor reviews on sites like tftcental, and in their pixel response and input lag testing, I havent seen any of the advertised 1ms displays actually turning out to be 1ms in testing. A few rare examples that do exceptionally well like the Acer XB270HU / XB271HU turned out to have about 3ms of input lag and about 6ms of pixel response, which is good enough really, its about 1 frame's worth of delay at 144hz which is nothing. But monitors like this are the exception rather than the norm, most of the tested displays end up being much slower, many of them even go as high as 30ms of total display lag, many of those being advertised as 1ms in official specs. So no, I don't trust official specs anymore, gotta see someone independent test it out and then I'd believe it.

p.s. I have no nostalgia for CRT because my first monitor was a 1280x1024 LCD

p.s.2 you said yourself, you can feel a difference up to 120hz, guess you're more sensitive than me, I can only feel a difference up to about 90hz, but either way, Im sure 1600x1200 at 100hz on a trinitron will feel better for you as well than 1600x1200 at 75hz on that acer. And again, no resolution scaling issues. True that 800x600 and 320x200/320x240 display as integer scaling on 1600x1200, but 640x480 and 1024x768 games are pretty common in the win9x era, what about those 😀

First thank you very much for your response - I'm always trying to find a good way to ask questions without coming off as argumentative so I really appreciate your genuine and helpful responses 😄

Anywho, this is the screen I ended up choosing for my retro rig - let me know what you think of it: https://www.acer.com/ac/en/US/content/profess … el/UM.FB7AA.001

I'm sure you're right that 100hz on a CRT would feel smoother than 75Hz on this Acer IPS panel (25% higher refresh rate, down in an area where I can easily see the increase no less). I believe that my old Sony Trinitron could do 100Hz, but it's been a good ~ 15 years since I've seen it in person. At the time I was a lot less educated about screen technology and replaced it with a 28" Viewsonic 1920x1200 piece of garbage because I thought bigger was better. Oh hindsight...

That Acer looks really nice actually. I can't find any detailed reviews to see how its like in pixel transitions and backlight bleed and such, but 24" 1200p IPS at 75hz has got to be a very rare combination.

About CRTs being a bit dim, I can confirm, in NFS High Stakes you can (way too easily) break your headlights and end up racing in the dark, and on my CRT its so dark I can barely see where I'm going, actually its probably how its supposed to be, since EA developed the game with CRT in mind so they should have known it gets this dark. On LCD, even in the dark, I can very easily see where I'm going so its no handicap at all. I'm fairly happy with the blacks tho, I have no pro calibration tools to measure things, but it looks quite decent to my eye, and yes, I usually game in the dark. And I confirm, bright pixels do have some glow, for example the bright yellow fps counter from fraps in the corner has a bit of a yellow halo around it in dark scenes. In fact bright moving objects on dark backgrounds seem to be leaving a bit of a trail, the kind you would normally see from dark moving objects on a VA panel. So CRT is not perfect either, but comparing to the alternatives, I think its the right pick for 4:3 games. Also, this is almost unrelated, but for the really old low rez 2D games you kinda want an old low rez shadow mask monitor that will display graphics in cartoony style instead of the sharp square pixel style you would get from LCD or even a Trinitron. The main reason why emulators tend to have CRT filter options nowadays

You can try this very simple test pattern on your CRT (or LCD, anything really):

https://i.imgur.com/eA7kAO6.png

if you cant see at least one or two squares in the top row then your blacks are simply too crushed (objectively) - a lot of shadow details will be lost. This could explain why you cant see much in dark scenes when playing NFS High Stakes.

If you lower your contrast to the point where black signal is truly black then you will not see the first 2 or 3 rows unless you load a calibration profile which "fixes" that.

In other words, if you adjust contrast to the point where you see at least one or two squares in the first row and then switch to a full black pattern you will see dark grey color instead of true black.

In the end, as with most things, its about personal preference - how you like the game to look and feel the most. There is no sticker on the game box that says anything about ideal viewing conditions so you cant really say how exactly the original artistic vision was supposed to look like. I have made dozens of different profiles and switch between them depending on the time of day, the game (preferred gamma), room lighting conditions and the image size. Different image size (4:3, 5:4, 16:9, etc) will output different cd/m2 so they are best to be calibrated separately as well. Calibrated profiles start look very bad if you steer away from the original settings/conditions even a little bit. Its a few factors, but produces a lot of combinations. One DTP94 calibration run can take about an hour so its something you want to do when the opportunity presents itself or be prepared to babysit it the whole day. Plus you need to re-do it once a year after "hardware" re-calibration of G2 and focus (they tend to drift over time). If you are not willing to tinker a lot then I would say you are missing half the "fun" with those newer Trinitrons/Diamondtrons. Its like locked iOS (LCD) versus rooted Android (CRT) kind of fun, each to their own. The resulting picture is by no means perfect but still highly relevant even by todays (relatively poor) standards when you take into account the motion clarity, refresh rate, fixed pixels and input lag.

By the way, older games are usually okay at around 2.4 gamma (which is similar to out-of-the-box CRT response curve), while newer titles are usually better at around 2.2 gamma. You can usually tell which is preferred when for example an old game has washed out non-popping greyish colors (meaning you should load gamma 2.4 profile) or when dark scenes in a newer game appear too dark (meaning you should load gamma 2.2 profile which helps with the black crush). But again, its just a personal preference, these are just some rules of thumb I use.

And one last thing people do not mention very often, CRTs wont produce a sharp image - especially over 75Hz. The image has this soft blur, especially around lighter colors (=more electrons hitting the same spot/area making it fuzzy). So black text on a white background is more blurry than text you see here on Vogons forum for example.

Just to clarify, I am talking about late Trinitron/Diamondtron PC monitors. I dont have any of those older shadow mask CRTs etc so I have no idea how these look/perform.

Lowering G2 with windas was the first thing I did after buying this IBM P275, but colorimeters are a bit too expensive for me at the moment... I'd like to have one eventually but cant afford it now. More importantly, the monitor has developed an annoying issue, where dark fields flicker onto the screen occasionally, and idk how to fix it, if it dies completely I dont think I'll be able to find another high end trinitron for such a cheap price, they seem to be getting ridiculously rare and expensive as of late. Might end up having to replace it with something like that 75Hz Acer. I have a backup Dell 2007FP but I definitely prefer the P275. The issue seems to be related to the video board at the back, as wiggling the VGA/DVI can provoke it or stop it temporarily, but its clearly not the ports themselves as Ive seen the issue with just the OSD menu, so its somewhere else on the video board. I tried to disassemble it and take out the board for a closer look, but I had trouble unplugging a cable that goes into it, so had to abort. Interestingly, for the next couple of days, there was not a single flicker, but then it started doing it again. Its sad, because I really like this monitor and it would be great if it can be fixed. Not only for my win98 and XP builds, but recently I also modded my og xbox to work with VGA, and the image it outputs on that monitor seems to be better than any TV I've tried.

I've seen the softer blurier look of text at 1600x1200 at 100hz, but I thought its just the cheap vga cable Im using, I was hoping a better quality cable should improve that. At any rate, its a non issue in games.

p.s. video of just after completing the xbox vga mod, my phone's camera is not doing it justice but it looks nice. The flickering in the video is not visible in person, its just the phone's camera thats capturing it like that, probably because the xbox runs at just 60hz
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jFQZYGiFNc

I am sorry to hear that but it is nice to hear you have at least attempted to look into it. Old monitors are rare like this because people throw them out at the first sign of any inconvenience. Being large and heavy is enough for a lot of people to just throw them out.

Try to find a local veteran technician who worked on CRTs (usually TVs) back in their heyday. Other than that, the usual is to re-cap and/or re-solder anything that you think could be the problem. Replacing parts is often not an option because parts are obviously rare as well.

I dont know what exactly you mean by "flickering dark fields" though What is a "field"? A more technical term for "frame" or something else? But if wiggling with the board changes the symptoms then its possible there is indeed some bad contact in that area, possibly the monitor connectors. Is the problem still there when you connect the monitor using the DVI connector instead of the VGA/D-SUB one?

Yes, the problem shows up with both the VGA and the DVI, it even shows up with nothing connected at all and just looking at the OSD menu on a black screen with no signal from anything. Fields was the best way I could describe it, as it doesnt usually cover the whole screen, just parts of it, usually leaning more towards the right side. Doesn't do it often enough to make the monitor unusable, but it does it often enough to bug me. I will see if I can capture it on my phone, but Im not home now and for the next couple of days

I have found that a regular VGA cable with ferrite ends performs exactly the same as some special BNC cables so cable quality seems overhyped in my own experience. At least with modern GPUs and modern CRTs, dont know about the rest.

The video looks very nice, too bad you cant measure it because the screen looks brighter than the regular 100cd/m2 or so. Maybe its just the camera that makes the picture appear a notch brighter than it really is. You could get a second-hand DTP94 calibration tool for around 50usd if you keep an eye out long enough (like I did). But its not necessary if you are happy with the native CRT picture, which is probably okay in most of the old games - the black crush gives the colors/picture a little more pop too.

If you manage to snag a video of that issue, surely post it here, maybe someone will recognize it.

duga3 wrote:

I have found that a regular VGA cable with ferrite ends performs exactly the same as some special BNC cables so cable quality seems overhyped in my own experience. At least with modern GPUs and modern CRTs, dont know about the rest.

The video looks very nice, too bad you cant measure it because the screen looks brighter than the regular 100cd/m2 or so. Maybe its just the camera that makes the picture appear a notch brighter than it really is. You could get a second-hand DTP94 calibration tool for around 50usd if you keep an eye out long enough (like I did). But its not necessary if you are happy with the native CRT picture, which is probably okay in most of the old games - the black crush gives the colors/picture a little more pop too.

If you manage to snag a video of that issue, surely post it here, maybe someone will recognize it.

The only time I've seen a difference in cables is going from VGA (analogue) in an electrically noisy area to DVI/HDMI/DP (digital). Very occasionally the screen image would be a little blurred/wiggly/etc and switching from VGA to a digital input would clear it up.

kalm_traveler wrote:

...Anywho, this is the screen I ended up choosing for my retro rig - let me know what you think of it: https://www.acer.com/ac/en/US/content/profess … el/UM.FB7AA.001

So, have you had time to test this one any further ? How do you like it ? Does it have a 'real' 75hz refresh, can you notice any difference from 60hz ? Etc....
Looking to buy a new 1920x1200 VGA IPS 75hz monitor myself, hence the interest. The Dell I found apparantly does NOT have any 75hz settings, though most of the 16:9 models do... :\